


Morning Sun

by Lilfunny



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Batfamily Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 14:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18701050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilfunny/pseuds/Lilfunny
Summary: Between his death, resurrection and subsequent replacement, Jason Todd just really needs a hug. Or maybe he just needs his dad.





	Morning Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drakefeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakefeathers/gifts).



> This is my first ever fic so please be nice! Based on a [post](https://drakefeathers.tumblr.com/post/184562037666/au-where-lost-days-jason-is-defeated-by-the-power) by drakefeathers. Find them on [tumblr](https://drakefeathers.tumblr.com/) and [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakefeathers)!  
> Beta'd by [Robin_Redvest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robin_Redvest/pseuds/Robin_Redvest).  
> OR: The one in which Jason is homesick, and returns home much earlier than in canon. Bruce is still not over Jason's death yet. Jason and Tim meet under slightly better circumstances.

Jason stood on his hotel room balcony, elbows resting on the handrail, eyes cast out over the city below. The painful stinging of his knuckles from skin worn away to open sores through his training fades away as his thoughts wander. The orange-golden streetlights are hauntingly familiar to the ones in Gotham, yet the buildings themselves shatter the illusion of that city from his past. The city that bore him, made him, and then broke him completely. The curved streets and looming, closely-stacked buildings could put him in any European city. He isn’t even sure anymore if he is currently in Munich or Paris. Talia has him constantly on the move, constantly training.

Constantly being hurt.

The teachers training him push him hard, far harder than Bruce ever did. Sometimes it feels like Jason’s crawling hand over hand through those fights. Just like how he pulled himself out of his own grave. He doesn’t think he’s felt safe since that awful, awful night  —  hasn’t felt safe or comfortable, or happy.

Jason pushes out a slow exhale, out from the balcony over whatever city he’s in. A sense of calm washes over himself as he realizes exactly what the weight Jason carries is from.

Jason is _tired_. He’s tired of the constant fighting and tired of his long winded revenge schemes on the boy who replaced him as Bruce’s son. It still _hurts_ , but the hurt is overpowered by a growing sense of need. The need to be away from the fights, the tests, the teachers. The need for the sheer comforting presence of the man he considers a father.

Jason realizes, in that instant, that he’s going to throw away the revenge plan. Somehow, there's no real feeling of loss in ignoring the plan that previously occupied his every waking thought. Rather, a spot in his chest that had been knotted painfully tight since the pit, loosens.

Another idea, a crazy, impossibly nice idea, begins to cement itself in Jason’s mind. His head feels clearer than it has in months, and the stinging of his knuckles is now a mere afterthought. 

His new plans are formulated in quick succession as Jason pivots away from the hotel room balcony and grabs an open duffle bag from against the wall. A look under the flap shows clothing and a quick rummage brings a large amount of cash and several passports with Jason’s aliases. Jason zips up the bag and tosses it over his shoulder. He then pulls his leather jacket off of a chair sitting in the corner of the room and throws it over the other shoulder.

The phone that Talia gave him, his one connection to her, sits on the nightstand.

Jason’s long strides eat up the distance between him and the door. The door is thrown open and, just like that, Jason is gone.

 

* * *

 

When Jason crawls into his bed in the Manor, bone weary, he lets out a deep sigh. The little knot in his chest finally, _finally_ begins to loosen. The room looks smaller than it did before he died. The school books scattered on the desk and the worn, leather baseball glove on the dresser are from another lifetime. They are his and they _aren’t_.

Still the sheets smell like he remembers, like the soap Alfred always used. Jason curls himself into a ball, trying hide from the world that brought him so much pain. He tangles the sheets around his hands, then clenches his fists, desperate to hold onto something kind, just one thing from his childhood that, right now, isn’t painful. Jason pulls his hands under his nose where he can smell the _Alfred’s_ detergent. The smell brings back memories of a kinder, gentler time when he and Alfred had tea in the breakfast nook and Bruce called him Jay-Lad.

The little knot in his chest loosens, just a little more, as Jason’s tears run down his face onto the pillow and sleep finally catches up to him.

 

* * *

 

It is the morning light, throwing sunbeams right onto Jason’s face, that makes him wake up. It almost feels like a dream to wake up to the weak Gotham sunlight in his bed in the manor. Jason’s bedroom is exactly how he left it those months and months ago. Back when the Manor was home and Bruce was Dad.

Perhaps that is why Jason begins to wander through the long Manor halls, neither angry nor frantic but peaceful. His soft muffled footfalls down the carpeted corridors match the tempo of his thudding heart and the pulsing knot grows tighter in his chest with every step.

Jason’s wandering feet follow an almost forgotten routine as they lead him towards the kitchen where Jason reasons Alfred must be cooking breakfast.

Stepping through the door frame into the kitchen, Jason meets the eyes of a kid sitting at the breakfast nook. The kid  —  Timothy Drake, his mind supplies, drops his fork into his scrambled eggs on the table in front of himself.

Jason feels his body freeze and his heart begin to beat fast and _loud_. Unhelpfully, his mind notes that he’s panicking. Gaze still locked with Tim, Jason watches as Tim’s eyes go comically wide and his face blanches as if he’s seeing a ghost.

Hah. As if he’d seen a _ghost_.

He can hear how fast his heart is beating, but, in spite of himself, an unlikely smile begins to tug at the corner of his lips. It takes an immense force of will for Jason to take one step after another until he is within range of the kid. Tim, to his credit, having become unfrozen on Jason’s approach, pulls himself as far from Jason as he can get and presses himself against the wall.

A pause.

Tim’s worried eyes flicker over Jason looking for any sign of a fight, his brow furrowed in confusion. His calculating stare tells Jason that he is trying to figure out how Jason became un-killed.

Jason watches Tim, trying to figure out the rage in his own heart and the kid in front of him. Jason’s eyes notice a hundred things, but the _happy awestruck wonder_ on Tim’s face is what surprises him the most. Jason is immediately thrown back into what it felt like the first time he met the man who he had wanted to be his ‘older brother’: Dick Grayson, the first Robin. Jason can recall the sheer heartbreak at seeing one of his heroes outright reject him. Jason remembers what that felt like and looks at Tim.

His throat is suddenly dry and he clears it once, twice.

Jason reaches his hand out toward Tim, over the table.

“Hey kid, I’m Jason. Uh-Jason Todd.”

Tim jumps, hearing Jason’s voice, but he still reaches out, glacially slow, to shake Jason’s hand.

“T-Timothy Drake. I’ve… Heard a lot about you?”, Tim offers. Jason blinks, startled to find that Tim knew about him, that someone _told_ Tim about him, that Jason’s presence continued even in his absence. His train of thought is broken by a loud crash.

Dropping Tim’s hand, Jason swings towards the noise and It’s —

 _Alfred_.

Alfred is just as frozen as Tim was, just a moment before. It seems to Jason that Alfred must have dropped Bruce’s breakfast tray. Shards of a ceramic sugar pot and milk pourer, a plate of steak, eggs and fruit salad and several glasses are spread over both the floor and the silver serving tray.

“Master...Master Jason?” Alfred breathes. And Alfred has tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to run down his cheeks.

Jason feels his heart skip a beat as he watches Alfred  —  Strong, steady, _unbreakable_ Alfred drop the tray and begin to cry silently.

Pounding footsteps can be heard racing down the hall, yet Jason can not, for his or anyone else’s life, look away from the closest thing he had to a grandfather.

Alfred doesn’t move his gaze either, imploring Jason to see the tears Alfred sheds for him.

Then Jason feels a presence at his back and a new pair of eyes raking him over, cataloging anything that could be of note later. Sizing him up for a fight.

Alfred clears his throat, “Master Bruce… It appears that…”

Jason rips his eyes from Alfred's open, gentle gaze and turns one last time to face-

“Bruce…” Jason whispers, looking at Bruce’s face for any indication of any sort of feeling —  if Jason is being _rejected_ after all of this, he will run faster and farther and hide even deeper than any super could find.

Jason finds himself reeling, his mind overcome with doubts, insecurities, and fears. He searches Bruce’s face but it’s blank. More blank than he remembers, though maybe Jason’s just out of practice reading him. The possibility of being thrown out, especially when Bruce hears what Jason’s training entailed, and what he did, and how he hurt people-

Jason is surrounded by Bruce’s arms. It’s as if Bruce is not sure Jason is real. As if Jason is an apparition of Bruce’s imagination that will surely dissolve by dawn. But then Bruce realizes that Jason is _real_.

Bruce’s hug goes from not quite touching to clutching Jason to him, one arm snaked up to hold the back of Jason’s skull into Bruce’s shoulder and the other crading the warm, solid, _alive_ mass of Jason.

Jason, shocked by the sudden tightening of the embrace, doesn’t move. _Bruce_ , who was never really a hugger, is clutching Jason. It’s as if Bruce’s hug has cut out the knot of hurt in Jason’s chest and somehow the rage and hurt is gone. And the hole that it left leaves him emptier but lighter. Jason thought he would never be hugged like this again. After the last year he has had, from being alone, fighting for his life in the League of Assassins, he has gone to being cradled, _cherished_ by Bruce. _His Dad._

Tears begin to blur Jason’s sight of Bruce’s shoulder as Jason reaches around Bruce to hug him back. Jason allows himself to belief that Bruce is back, that his Dad is _back._

“ _Dad.”_ Jason whispers through the tears that are quickly wetting Bruce’s shirtsleeve.

Bruce has an almost imperceptible yet sharp intake of breath before he answers. Bruce’s voice is as low and rumbly as it always had been in the cape and cowl, yet the tears Jason feels in his hair are not heard in Bruce’s voice. Instead, there is outright reverence as Bruce says,

“You’re home, Jason. You _came home_.”

Jason pulls away slightly to tell Bruce about the things Jason did before and Jason begins in a panicky voice,

“While I was - gone, I did so many bad things, and Talia had me training as an assassin, and I _hurt_ so many _people_ -”

“ _Jay-Lad.”_ Bruce’s authoritative voice cuts through Jason’s panic. Jason blinks, cheeks wet with tears, as Bruce’s eyes find his. Bruce’s gaze is unwavering, strong, but most importantly, _soft._ Bruce’s hands catch Jason’s face and hold it, long enough for Bruce’s thumbs to wipe away some of the wetness on Jason’s cheeks. Bruce gives a quirk of his lips  — a mix between amused, and and content  —  as he states softly, leaving no room for argument, “Jason. You are my _son_ and you are _home_. It is a miracle, one that I not dare throw away. Everything else can come later.”

With that, Jason collapses into Bruce’s arms and begins to sob. Bruce stands there, strong and warm, holding Jason, stroking his hair and murmuring softly. The early morning light breaks through the window, illuminating the tableau of father and son.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Title: Mourning Son


End file.
